The Communications Room

I would never tell a client that they should reduce their budgets in order to make us more creative, because quite frankly it isn’t true. A bigger budget obviously always provides you with greater opportunities but I love this idea posted by Howies that suggests when budgets are smaller it makes them think harder about what they should be doing with the money. As well as making people  more creative and accountable it sort of makes the idea that much purer.

With free off the shelf tools and  open source applications all you need is a bit of a technical aptitude, something interesting to talk about or show and voila, you have yourself a digital presence. If it’s good enough people will find it. It strips everything naked down to its barest form. It forces you to make sure you really do have a good idea before you start splashing your cash.

On a slightly different tangent but still using technology other people have built to tell your story is CCTV ‘video sniffing’. Essentially people use government CCTV networks to create mini productions. The UK has CCTV cameras pretty much everywhere, but what is interesting is that if you have been filmed, you are entitled to the footage. So essentially people are coming up with a concept and performing it in front of CCTV cameras, applying for the footage and editing it accordingly. Pretty damn clever in my opinion. The only down side is that it took one guy 5 years and over 200 applications to local councils to finish the project. But it shows what can happen if you put your imagination first before spending or assigning your budget.